This is part of my Exegetical Compilation series which I’m (verrrrrry slowly) posting up here.
Isaiah 49: not only does God give the nations to the Servant (Messiah) as well as all Israel, at verses 6-10, but there are at least slight indications here that God raises the punished dead so that they will be loyal to Him as well.
Admittedly, as far as those particular verses go in themselves, this may also or instead refer to the unfairly imprisoned/slain righteous, as certainly is intended at Rev 7:14-17.
However, not long afterward in the chapter (verses 14-26), righteous Israel, upset because of being bereaved of rebel children by God (Who has definitely slain them for their sins), will be astonished that God returns their children to them, now properly loyal, and even adds children never born to them at all (apparently a reference to salvation of the Gentiles). Compare with Jeremiah 31:15 and its contexts, which Matthew regarded as being connected (via the riddle at the end about God accomplishing the restoration of slain rebel Ephraim to righteous Rachel through doing a new thing involving a woman surrounding a man) as a reference to the Virgin Birth of Christ.
Despite God’s pagan enemies choking on their own flesh and being made drunk with their own blood (as at the end of the chapter, poetically describing their messy deaths), they’re still slated to repent and reconcile with Israel, although in some humility, with kings and princesses caring for the least of righteous Israel. God promises the captives of the mighty man and the prey of the tyrant will be rescued, which in Christian antiquity was regularly interpreted as a reference to the rescue of sinners from the domain of Satan even after death. Compare with the kings of the earth being slain by Christ’s militant second coming in Rev 19 and then entering the New Jerusalem in Rev 21 – this isn’t the chapter of Isaiah being directly referenced there, which is Isaiah 60, but the themes are quite similar.
See also the composite exegetical argument made from St. Paul’s reference to Isaiah 49:8 in the second half of 2 Corinthians 5 (and first verses of what we now call chapter 6).
Members are invited to post further or alternate interpretations and observations on these verses below, including links to threads elsewhere.
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